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NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability vs OP5 Monitor comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 12, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

NETSCOUT Network & Applicat...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OP5 Monitor
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
40th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (42nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is 2.9%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OP5 Monitor is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE2.9%
OP5 Monitor0.6%
Other96.5%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

HT
Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza
Monitoring has improved bandwidth insights and application diagnosis but setup and costs still need work
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time. This needs more improvement. I believe it is expensive. They need to reduce its budget a little bit. Comparing to other solutions, it is very expensive.
Sumanth Arshanapally - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Monitoring ease and cost-saving benefits enhance operational efficiency
The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins. We can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly. It's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see. We can extract the reports easily, and this is very easy to compare. Real-time monitoring in OP5 Monitor provides data every one minute or every five minutes, enabling us to get live data from the last one minute or last five minutes. OP5 Monitor gave us proper server availability, so we can always check whether a server goes down or the server CPU and memory decreases. Before reaching a particular bottleneck situation, we identified and fixed the issue, which helped us from a cost-saving business perspective. It helped us avoid application downtime.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Before we were pretty weak in network KPIs; the solution transforms packet wire data into real-time data that is actionable, helps us with faster detection of issues, allows us to create alerts, provides the right people in our company with the right information in a single pane of glass view, and gives us increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment."
"It gives me the MOS, latency, and jitter."
"The solution has cut our overall troubleshooting time and has helped to increase our network uptime."
"It helps us to assist our customers to isolate problems. If it is us who is having the problem, then we can use it to streamline the process."
"Proactive versus a customer having a bad experience: That is the key point."
"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"It is an easy-to-scale platform."
"The solution most definitely provides us with increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment, allowing us to understand changes that we're making in the network, see our network's performance day-to-day and hour-to-hour, and even identify customer impact before the customer complains."
"Instead of checking the logs each Monday, or checking that applications are running, and checking your ticketing system for angry users, you put this system in place and it monitors and continuously tests everything that is of importance to you and your users."
"Especially with the API, where I can use the data with many other systems, it's great."
"The API makes it pretty easy to integrate with any system."
"With limited hardware or a virtual machine, you can address a huge network, hundreds of thousands of elements that need to be monitored. Other commercial software is not on that level."
"We can also observe whatever we want, and there are no limitations."
"The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins; we can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly, it's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see."
"It monitors and continuously tests everything that is of importance to you and your users. It could be everything from monitoring disk space to CPU usage to memory. It could include determining if the response time in your e-commerce platform is quick enough, or whether you have too many bounces from some of the pages on your website. You want to monitor anything that could cost you money or time or resources. You can do that with this system. It's very flexible."
"The best feature is that it is very relatable, stable, and scalable. The logger is a part of the software, but it's not the most important point of it."
 

Cons

"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
"I was upset when they sold the product to NETSCOUT."
"It's not able to communicate with our probes."
"One of the products we use is SolarWinds, and it provides a very cool mapping of an agent from end-to-end. If NETSCOUT could somehow implement that into their design... make it quicker and easier to get those net paths, it would be huge."
"The scalability has some limitations and quirks to it. I would like to be able to upgrade rather than replace the whole thing."
"I'd like to see the nGeniusONE, the nGeniusPULSE, and the OptiView, their three separate products, work a little better together, a little more streamlined."
"I would like to see improvement in the user experience. It's hard to manage it. We need a dedicated, highly-qualified person, compared to similar tools. Obviously, it's in a higher bracket, salary-wise. That's something the NETSCOUT team needs to focus on. It's a completely niche-skill technology, where we need to have the skills to manage, maintain, and deploy it."
"Some help screens would be nice, especially if we bring on new operators. It would be great to see if they have more helpful tips available."
"The solution is useful for tweaking. However, there have been some negative experiences, such as limited report capabilities. The only report available is in PDF format, making it difficult for teams managing multiple servers to extract data in Excel format. The speaker recommends that the team improve the report capabilities to better serve users."
"We do not get performance reports properly, which needs improvement."
"They need to improve the dashboard interface."
"OP5 lacks some visualization, a feature that makes some other products nice. Op5 is built for purpose, which is fine, but if you compare it with some new products, the visualization is not so appealing, especially for management... If you don't need fancy visualizations, OP5 is fine."
"OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful."
"IT environments today are in constant flux. This is driven by the newer cloud technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker, etc. The whole Nagios-based monitoring system that OP5 is created on top of, is based on a host-service model. There is a need for a strategy on what to do with more dynamic environments. There is some cool stuff going on in that direction."
"The user interface is not what we are used to these days, and should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little high."
"The platform is expensive."
"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
"I don't know what the cost to buy the solution was, but I doubt if it's a significant part of the budget as far as the maintenance and support are concerned."
"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."
"Cost is probably the biggest drawback. Compared to some of the newer vendors that have popped up in the space, it's definitely more on the expensive side... [But] it's been able to keep its value, even in the face of the cheaper competition."
"I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product may come across as a cheap tool for some, while it may seem costly for others."
"OP5 has a very low price as a solution, compared to many other solutions out there."
"The cost of the license and support are separate. If you want platinum call support, it will cost more than a regular call. I did not opt for it, as it is an additional cost."
"It was not expensive. And because it's less demanding in terms of hardware, you don't have to pay for another SQL or other database license, and you can have a huge installation on one machine..."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OP5 Monitor?
The price for OP5 Monitor is fine, but we don't know the exact price because it was managed by us; the customer themselves bought it and gave it to us to monitor.
What needs improvement with OP5 Monitor?
OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful. For application-related issues, ...
What is your primary use case for OP5 Monitor?
Our previous use case for OP5 Monitor was server monitoring.
 

Also Known As

NETSCOUT nGenius, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE, NETSCOUT vSTREAM, NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG, Iris Session Analyzer, ClearSight Analyzer
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cerner Corporation
Svenska Spel, Carus, VGL, Tele2, Viking Line, Clas Ohlson, Vanderlande, Försäkringskassan
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability vs. OP5 Monitor and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,240 professionals have used our research since 2012.